Page 7 - Performance and Power Consumption
For our tests, the ASUSTOR AS4002T was connected to our central home network with CAT5e wiring. Unfortunately, I was not able to test its 10GbE performance since no other equipment in our lab supports it. Thus, we were limited to the Gigabit network only. For fairness, we did not test with link aggregation. However, one can aggregate all three ports together for a 3Gbps connection. One Seagate NAS HDD ST4000VN000 4TB was installed in the AS4002T for the purpose of benchmarking. The client computer was configured with the following specifications:
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.6GHz
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-D15S
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H-BK
RAM: Patriot Viper 3 Low Profile PC3-17000 4x8GB
Graphics: Gigabyte G1 Gaming GeForce GTX 960 4GB
Chassis: Fractal Design Define R6 Blackout TG
Storage: OCZ Vector 180 240GB; Crucial MX200 500GB
Power: Seasonic PRIME Ultra Titanium 850W
Sound: Auzentech X-Fi HomeTheater HD
Optical Drive: LiteOn iHAS224-06 24X DVD Writer
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Compared Hardware:
- ASUSTOR AS4002T
- ASUSTOR AS1002T
- ASUSTOR AS3102T
- ASUSTOR AS3202T
- ASUSTOR AS6404T
- ASUSTOR AS7004T
- QNAP HS-210
- QNAP TS-253B
- QNAP TS-453A
- QNAP TS-470
- QNAP TVS-463
- QNAP TVS-473
- Thecus N2310
Equipped with the Seagate NAS HDD ST4000VN000 4TB, our ASUSTOR AS4002T was ready to roll. From our experience in benchmarking, Intel Gigabit LAN adapters -- at least on the client side -- typically perform better than their Realtek and Marvell counterparts. Therefore, to prevent any bottlenecks on the client side, our Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H-BK motherboard was connected to the network via its integrated Intel Gigabit LAN adapter. We also conducted the tests on our OCZ Vector 180 240GB solid state drive on the client side to ensure there is nothing limiting the performance of our ASUSTOR AS4002T than the NAS itself. The results were within our expectations, which was excellent. As you can see in our graphs above, the ASUSTOR AS4002T was capable of doing 108.04MB/s for write and 111.42MB/s for read using the Seagate NAS HDD. At this point, the bandwidth of Gigabit LAN is the limitation. It is regrettable that we could not test its performance over 10GbE. Again, you can get up to 3Gbps speed if you aggregate three network ports together on a Gigabit network, provided your client system has the same link aggregation setup.
ATTO disk benchmark provides valuable insight into evaluating disk performance; it is especially valuable since it is not local disk limited like Windows file copy but rather the network adapter itself. After first using it in our QNAP TS-559 Pro+ review countless years ago, ATTO has been an integral part of our storage benchmarks; used in everything ranging from USB flash drives to solid state disks. Venturing into the area of 118.697MB/s in read and 117.993MB/s write for pretty much everything 64K and up, remember the theoretical maximum of Gigabit Ethernet is 125MB/s (1000Mbps / 8) with overhead -- this is about as fast as it gets. Under the curve, it was slightly slower to pick up that high-power systems like the QNAP TVS-473 and even the company's own low power AS3202T, but the gap was not considerable. At peak, the AS4002T was limited only by the Gigabit network interface and not the performance of the NAS itself. The ASUSTOR delivered performance well in line with the competition for standard workloads, and we expect even better performance on 10GbE networks.
With one Seagate NAS hard drive installed, power consumption for our specific configuration was at a reasonable 13W idling and 16W under load. These figures were a bit higher than the ASUSTOR AS6404T and AS3202T on both counts, systems with more powerful Intel Celeron quad core SoC compared to the AS4002T, respectively, which was surprising. Considering the performance class of this device, this is acceptable, but not impressive. Power consumption will drop if the hard drives are configured to turn off if they are not used. Considering it is going to be running 24/7, every watt adds up.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware (External)
3. A Closer Look - Hardware (Internal)
4. Configuration and User Interface, Part I
5. Configuration and User Interface, Part II
6. Configuration and User Interface, Part III
7. Performance and Power Consumption
8. Conclusion
